


Tactiturn

by Viori (nihilists)



Category: Gackt (Musician) - Fandom, Hyde (Musician) - Fandom
Genre: Angst, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-09
Updated: 2013-11-09
Packaged: 2017-12-31 23:26:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,939
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1037644
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nihilists/pseuds/Viori
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When unspoken rules are broken between Gackt and Hyde, it makes all the difference in endings and beginnings.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Tactiturn

 

 

Taciturn  
by Viori

  
  
  
  
  
  
The water had gone cold so long ago and so slowly that he didn't realize that his body was shaking with need for heat until the tremors themselves woke him. Startlingly rippleless, the frigid mass that had once enveloped him with warmth seemed to rob what little he had left in his bones now. Fickle thing. Drawing an unsteady breath, he braced his pruny fingers on the edge of the bath and drew himself up out of it. The blackly whimsical part of his mind that he always seemed to be holding hands with was surprised he was able to, that it hadn't just frozen into a block of ice around him while he'd slept.  
  
It was 1 degree Celsius on that winter day. As Hyde dripped water on the already sopping floor, arms and legs trembling wildly in a desperate attempt to shake warmth back into his body, his breath turned white and disappeared. Beyond it, he could see the abandoned corridor past the open bathroom door. It was empty. At the mouth of it was the genkan. Even in his state of pre-hypothermia he observed that there was only one pair of shoes there, standing like sleeping soldiers guarding the entrance to the rental house nobody knew about.  
  
He was brought back to himself when his heel slipped on the water-slick linoleum and he would have crashed down into it if his elbow hadn't saved him by catching on the edge of the sink. Letting out a muffled yip of pain, he righted himself, clutching at the spot that was likely to be sporting a bruise the size of his fist when the sun rose next. He slid the rest of the way, skin squeaking through the few centimeters of water clumsily before his feet met more forgiving carpet. No longer at risk of breaking his neck, he sped up as much as his numbed limbs could allow, his mind creaking from a bemused state to one of survival.   
  
Get warm.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
"Is it too warm?"   
  
"It's fine." It was so hot he could feel his pulse beating in his veins everywhere. In his chest, in his arms, in the soles of his feet, in the pit of his stomach. Steam rose up off the white-clear surface of the water, which bobbed and swished whenever one of the two bodies submerged within it moved. When Hyde lifted his hand from it his fingers looked as if they were giving off magical vapor. He snorted softly at himself. What a stupid thing to think.  
  
"What's so funny?" The voice came from behind him. Hyde could feel skin against his sides from where knees touched him, legs spread out in front of him from the body that reclined at his back. They were longer than his, more elegant in bone structure. The feet were beautifully sculpted with a nice, round heel and toes that were neither too short nor too long, the nails trimmed nicely. Noticing things like this unnerved him because he usually didn't care for something as commonly unsightly as feet, but there he was looking at them through the water as if they were something pretty to look at that anyone would want to see.  
  
Disgusting.  
  
"Nothing," he said lightly, turning his head to acknowledge his companion. "I was just thinking of something."  
  
"You always are." The voice was supine, much like he'd imagine the body that owned it was also, leaning back in the Western style soaking tub, all smooth skin stretched tight over lean muscle and bone. His stomach twinged with something akin to scorn. He did not turn to look.  
  
Beneath the water, fingers crawled over his hips, drawing him back as if weightless against the body that felt at least ten degrees hotter than the sloshing wave that spilled lazily over the lip of the tub. He was never asked what it was he was thinking on and now was no exception. He listened now to the drumbeat of his heart in his ears that was magnified by the scalding water. The drippy faucet kept adding, bit by bit, to the overful basin.   
  
They played in silence more often than anything else. It had a heaviness to it that was both crushing and freeing, at least for him; a silent struggle of who would say what next or who would finally admit to how insane it all had grown to be. Cogs would turn in each of their heads, shielding their secrets like the innerworkings of a clock that, if revealed, would make the machine itself stop functioning correctly. Why not keep guessing? Maybe it was the mere fact that neither one of them would lift the veil long enough to show what really mattered, what was really feared, what was truly desired, that kept the pleasurable feeling of dread hanging in the air like a storm before breaking. Wasn't that always the best part? The build up, the rolling dark clouds on the horizon, promising more.  
  
So they kept up the dance, dodging one another in an unspoken nothing that meant everything before the first clap of thunder would break the sky.  
  
There was the game. Hyde watched dumbly as the water dripped from the cooling mouth of the faucet, lost in his own musings over non-complexities. Doing everything he could to not focus on how he thought he could feel the beat of the other man's heart against his back. The heat was getting to him. He didn't like the idea of being so close to something so alive when he felt, or didn't feel, the way he did, or was supposed to. He moved, the fingers on his hips turning to pincers, keeping him in place, drawing him closer to that heart.  _Ba-dum_. Close enough to words, breaking up the game of silence. Cue.  _Ba-dum._  Cue.  
  
He gave a start that came both from the sensation of lips on his naked shoulder and a thought that crossed his mind. Maybe he was just hearing his own heart, tapping against his back to speak to the one behind him, making jokes, telling lies.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
Hyde was laying underneath the covers naked. He had heard, somewhere, that a cocoon was better for creating warmth than layering your clothes until you waddled and squatted. He'd cranked the heating. He didn't care about the cost. He would wake up sweating if he dozed, the needle pointing to indicate that he wanted the house to resemble the tropics. With a belly full of hot tea he hadn't even tasted, he laid in the absolute silence that only winter can afford. He could see the genkan from the open bedroom door. One pair of shoes.   
  
There was one person besides him, who cut the checks and made the arrangements, that didn't rank with the nobodies that didn't know about this place.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
"I think you're only beautiful because you appear to always be in pain."  
  
"That's ludicrous," came his derisive snort, turning to look at him with mocking eyes. It was part of everything. "I smile and laugh like the rest of you."  
  
Eyes that hardly ever reflected anything but an underlying current of infuriating calm matched his gaze. He tore his own away, but pretended that the reason for it was because he wanted to move his wet hair from his eyes.   
  
"You are on the outside," Gackt said quietly.  
  
"What's that supposed to mean? You're always over analyzing things. I'm here right now, aren't I? With you." He struck at the heart with a note of false tenderness. Those eyes didn't waver.   
  
"You put yourself there." The finality in that, the assured tone that said that his companion knew he was right made him want to lash out with hands or words or anything at all, but he had few weapons to combat what he didn't know, didn't really want, and didn't understand. Instead, he sunk back into the chest behind him. He could no longer feel his heart. The water had cooled that much as it gave off dreamy spirals of steam at the edges. Their pulses were no longer palindromes riding along screaming hills of heat.   
  
"You let me bring you here," he pointed out to him, flatly, without color. Drawn to madness, this one was, and so was he.  
  
The hands that had been holding onto his hips shifted like soundless drifting lengths of kelp, wrapping around his thighs, brushing fingertips up underneath them. When he touched him he could never think of anything to say, much less think at all. The silence said everything, anyway. The air grew heavier.  
  
"Yes, but I can pull you back, can't I?"  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
Hyde was in the shower, again surrounded and coated in blazing hot water. He knew so much exposure would dry his skin, but he paid little heed to that fact. Standing underneath the spray he heard noise that matched the eerily calm recollections in his head. He wasn't entirely certain if he was trying to stamp them from his memory or prove that they were real. He put his hand on a particular spot on the droplet-speckled, cool tile on the wall. He licked his lips, tasted clean. Apart from the din of the spray pounding on the tub, his body, the curtain, he could feel hear the cogs turning, the even, cut pieces turning thoughts around in his head. Like ticking. He drew away.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
"Don't I?"  
  
He had his legs around him. The silence hadn't stopped. There was a smack as his palm hit the tiled wall to his right, fighting for purchase when there was none, crammed up against a corner of the bathtub so that his other arm was forced around the other man's neck, shoulder. There was water everywhere. Spilling, splashing onto the floor of the bathroom, soaking everything, softening the wooden floor molding, ruining whatever expensive fabrics made up their shirts. He could hear his heart again. He could see it, even, in flashes behind his eyelids when he had to close his eyes and cry out because he was hurting him.  
  
"Gackt--!" he cried, but he was cut off as his mouth came crashing down onto his, wild, frenzied. This wasn't silence. This was screaming, even though the only sounds were that of their struggle and the slapping noises as the contents of the tub slowly emptying in sudden rushes over the sides. Something was breaking.   
  
It was the silence.   
  
"Look at me." Gackt's voice booked no argument; it was something he'd never heard before, an ambition spoken there that was supposed to stay hanging in the air with the silence. When he peeled his eyes open to answer the command he felt the piercing of his body on another's, prying fingers working where there was a gap, and he dug his blunt nail tips into Gackt's skin like an animal.   
  
"Unnh," Hyde grunted mindlessly, ignoring the words, moving against him at the same time that he was trying to get away, panting. This he understood. But in the same moment that he thought that he felt Gackt's hands turning his chin so he would have to look at him, so he opened his eyes again from where he'd shut them.  
  
"You think I have no idea," he said, lifting Hyde up enough so that his arm wasn't quite so tangled over his shoulder, and Hyde gave a small grunt as the joints complained belatedly about being so inconsiderately stretched. With water dripping from his hair into his face, Hyde's looked at him witlessly. Without another word said, he was flipped so that his chest was pressed against the cool, unyielding edge of the tub, his palms gripping it by instinct before he cast a savage look of question over his shoulder. Gackt was looming over him, purpose gleaming in his eyes, one of the most human expressions Hyde had ever seen on him.   
  
He said nothing. He didn't have to because the silence was still speaking for him as he clung to the shattered frame of it. Gackt leaned over him, he kissed the livid red skin of his shoulder, journeying to his neck, letting the ends of his hair slip over his nose before following the branch of his backbone. Hyde twitched, trembled, and jerked, nerves on edge as much as his mind was, craning to watch him as much as his position allowed, thinking of Gackt as something that might tear him apart.  
  
Gackt wouldn't answer him. He'd shirked the game of silence and was using rules Hyde had ignored, abandoned. Hyde pinched his fingers as he strengthened his hold on the tub ledge, gritting his teeth.   
  
The kisses kept falling over the bumps of his spine. Gackt was seemingly laying one for each vertebrae, a tenderness that wasn't unusual with him, but there was something different because the pregnant silence was gone, the air was clear and light and Hyde felt more naked in it than he ever had, his skin seared yet cold. There was oil now, fetched from a slotted shelf beneath the shower head. His body lurched, his mouth dropping open as he counted the seconds, knees bumping against porcelain, heat rising as fingers sought and found.  
  
"You don't," he choked out as colors spun wildly in his head, notes of his breathy panting filling the air. Hyde always looked as if he were fighting something just before they pushed themselves together this way. His brow was knitted and his jaw seemed tense even while his mouth hung open. He held himself in defense against Gackt, always. He wanted to act like he didn't know what Gackt meant, but the weight of the silence had left the air and had settled in the bottom of his stomach.  
  
"I do," was Gackt's calm reply. Hyde couldn't hear it over the sound of his own cry, his thighs pinned against the tub wall as the hips behind him slowly slid forward.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
Hyde heard the door open, heard it close. He heard the solitary pair of shoes being joined by another, the shuffle of a coat being shrugged off, the muffled landing of feet over carpeting in the hall. He didn't move from under his low canopy of blankets and it had little to do with the cold that waited for him outside of his cozy den. Sometimes children lay beneath their sheets, flat and still, in play or in fear, hoping that they'll be overlooked as nothing.  
  
He didn't really stir as he felt the covers lifting up to allow a colder figure to join him, dressed in denim and cotton still chill from the winter that crept in from the cracks in the windowsill. It was when arms came around him, confusingly cold-warm, that he shivered as if touched by something graver than Death. He let the memory that had been playing like a Möbius strip inside his head unfold itself once more.  
  
  
  
 __  
"I really like you."  
  
It was a sweltering summer night in a hotel room in Taiwan. Bottles of expensive alcohol littered the coffee table of the suite, ashes of countless spent cigarettes peppering the glass surface. Hyde shifted to look at who was sitting next to him on the couch that was too soft to sit on for very long without moving your weight to another spot. It seemed to take forever just to meet his eyes and the room was pulsing faintly. He knew they both were far beyond tossed, as Gackt had attempted to light the air  **beside**  Hyde's last cigarette.  
  
"I like you too," Hyde answered easily, smiling drunkenly at the man he barely knew. An unavoidable voice in his mind whispered warnings that he dismissed. He had wrangled in his past, his open self with all its needing and wanting. He made and kept what he needed, now. What was the harm, or the risk, in getting to know this unmistakably ridiculous person that was often crowned Japan's most curiously intriguing commodity. He had never given it thought before, but then again, he'd never been in a position to consider it before.  
  
Gackt was, after all, clearly a little daft.  
  
Gackt had reached out and touched Hyde's shoulder, smiling in a way that, Hyde thought, meant he was drunk enough to be sincere. "We're going to be great friends."  
  
"You think so?" Amused, Hyde set his hand over Gackt's, surprised by how warm it was.   
  
"I do. I'm going to know everything about you, Hyde. I won't accept anything less."  
  
  
  
  
"Are you angry?"  
  
Hyde turned a deliberately cool gaze over his shoulder at the new company in his bed. He was met with eyes covered in the fake blue he'd come to expect, controlled and steady on him. "For leaving you in the tub?" Gackt continued, his arms heavy weights around Hyde's body.  
  
"No," Hyde surprised himself with his own answer. "You weren't worried that I might drown?"  
  
"No," Gackt said, giving a minute shake of his head. "I knew you'd wake up and come to your senses."  
  
"Don't you mean just wake up?"  
  
"No." He was telling him not to be futile.  
  
Hyde returned his attention forward, resting his head with his still-wet hair onto the pillow, his hands laid over the pair that had such a hold on him. Beyond the open door of the bedroom he could see the genkan. There were two pairs of shoes, one set still glistening from melting snow. They belonged to the only other person who knew about this place, held inside his heart, sheltered in frigid cold, waiting to be smashed apart.  
  
  
END  
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End file.
